The company announced the punishments for the employees involved after Reuters saw the memo and shared the contents.

It was learnt that the employees who were responsible for the tweet quickly deleted it, but a screenshot of the tweet went viral, catching the attention of Huawei executives.

According to the company’s corporate senior vice president and director of the board Chen Lifang, the tweet “caused damage to the Huawei brand,” and occurred when an iPhone was used to send the message after a desktop computer malfunctioned. It felt the accidental tweet “showed procedural incompliance and management oversight.”

Huawei demoted the employees responsible for the tweet from an iPhone by one rank, and also reduced their monthly salaries by 5,000 yuan, equivalent to approximately $728.